"It might help me about the lease."
Judith seemed to reflect a moment, then she looked up quietly, and said:
"When we are married, Richard."
"Why, child, it is only a scrap of paper that no one but Sir Noel will ever care for."
"I know that, and sometimes wonder you are so sharp after it. My arm is all sorts of colors yet where you grasped it after that race down the banks of the lake. If the game-keeper had not come in sight, I don't know what might have chanced. Oh, Richard, your face was awful that day. It frightened me!"
"Too much, I fear, and that makes you so obstinate. I dare say that you never keep the bit of paper about you?" questioned Storms, with a dull, sinister look, which was so perceptible in the moonlight that the girl shrunk from him unconsciously.
"No," she answered. "I never keep it about me, and never shall till we are wed."
"And then?"
"I will give it to you, as you crave it so much, and in its stead take the marriage lines. If it were worth a thousand pounds, I would rather have the lines."
"A thousand pounds! Why, lass, what are you thinking of? Who ever heard of giving money for a scrap of writing like that?"